Thursday, November 03, 2005

Gone: another 100 square miles of marshland 

The Times-Picayune deserves enormous credit for their work since Katrina. Today's issue is especially good. The below excerpts are from an article titled "Coast lost 64,000 acres to storms; Habited areas now at even more risk".


Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shredded or sank at least 100 square miles of marshland along Louisiana's fragile coastline, federal scientists announced Wednesday, further exposing the region to powerful storms rolling off the Gulf of Mexico and destroying some of the most productive marine habitat in the country.
...
Marshes blunt the force of strong tropical storms and moderate hurricanes by reducing wave power and sucking energy from cyclones that feed off warm open waters. They also serve as spawning and nursery grounds for shrimp, crabs, redfish and other species highly valued by recreational and commercial fishers.

More than 1,900 square miles of Louisiana's coastal marshlands disappeared during the past century. Culprits include canals dug for energy exploration, the settling of land over tapped-out oil and gas reserves, and the building of Mississippi River levees that blocked new land from forming out of river sediments.

Since the early 1990s, when wetlands loss finally gained serious political attention, state and federal agencies spent $264 million on restoration projects through the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act, often referred to as the Breaux Act after its sponsor, former U.S. Sen. John Breaux, D-La.

That money pales next to estimates of $14 billion needed to fully restore the coast. Efforts to persuade Congress to pick up most of that cost have languished for the past several years. A compromise plan offered last year promised $1.9 billion for the effort, but that money, too, remains stalled in the Senate.
...
Katrina "shows this is real and we're living on borrowed time," [Mark Davis with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana] said. "Every day that goes by without a commitment to restore the coast is a day that another family or business decides they are not coming back."
posted by oyster @ 10:22 AM
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